This invention relates to the application principles of low temperature physical vapor deposition (PVD), ion cleaning, and ion coating to coat super fine ion particles of multiple elements on the surface of a micro route substrate to form a thin film, more specifically to coating zirconium (Zr), hafnium (Hf), carbon (C), nitrogen (N) multiple elements on the surface of a micro route substrate.
A small route is usually installed on the computer numerical control (CNC) routing machine to route the material of a printed circuit board (PCB) via automatic operation. In a modern CNC routing machine operation plant, it is desirable to increase productivity. Besides, it is also desired by the vendors to increase the capacity of mass production without increasing the number of machines since the purchasing cost of the machines is usually the highest among manufacturing costs. Therefore, it is important for a vendor to get the route with higher cutting performance, better hardness, better wear-resistance, as well as longer life. It has been desirable to have better adhesive thin films, to get better quality of a coated micro route, which could bear higher rotation speed, further to increase the speed of feeding and thus to increase the capacity of cutting. However, it is not easy for the vendor to develop a process of coating a thin film with high adhesion to the substrate of a micro route. This invention is aimed to solve this problem by developing a process of coating a multiple-element thin film of ultra-fine ion particles on the substrate of a micro route.
Theoretically, it is possible to coat titanium nitride (TiN), titanium carbon nitride (TiCN) thin film on a large cutting micro route via physical vapor deposition (PVD)[, since it can] to enhance the hardness of micro routers, and raise cutting performance as well as enhance micro route""s life. However, it is still impossible for the vendors to coat a thin film with better adhesion to the substrate of a micro route. In the prior art the processing of coating film is to clean the raw micro route in the presence of air first, and then proceed with coating under vacuums. In the coating process, ions bombarded from a target is not fined further by an ion assistant device or any other method.
When a coated micro route cools in the presence of air, oxide contaminations are easily formed on the surface of the coated micro route substrate. The coated materials are large particles having low adhesion to the micro route substrate when the coating process is an application of conventional physical vapor deposition (PVD). The coated micro route thereof does not have substantially higher hardness, enough tough internals, or higher wear-resistance, and the life of the coated micro route does not increase much. More importantly, it is difficult to coat a thin film on the surface of a raw micro route substrate so that the film has good adhesion to the substrate. Conventional chemical vapor deposition (CVD) is carried out at 950xc2x0 C. which easily results in decreased toughness and decreased hardness of the coated micro route. Therefore, CVD will not do a good job for coating thin films on a micro route.
The object of this invention, therefore, is to provide a process of coating ZrxHfxCxNx multi-element thin film onto the surface of a micro route substrate. The materials coated are fine particles, and have good adhesion to the substrate. The coated materials remain on the surface even when the life of the coated micro route is over. The process time of this invention is also short. The coated micro route has hard surface, tough internals, good wear-resistance, good dissipation of heat, and longer life, and the size and appearance of the coated micro route as compared with raw micro routers remain the same.
Thus the further object of this invention is to provide a physical vapor deposition (PVD) process operated under low temperatures, i.e., a raw micro route is cleaned by electron beams in the presence of air, and then the raw micro route is put in a vacuum condition and heated. Next, the surface of the raw micro route is cleaned by ions, and finally the coating process is operated under low temperatures. This invention uses arc sources to bombard cations, uses a filtration net to get small cation particles, and at the same time uses an ion assistant device such as an ion gun to make the filtrated cations become smaller, which makes the coated materials fine particles and have good adhesion to the surface of the micro route substrate. The coated micro route has hard surface, tough internals, good wear-resistance, and the cutting speed and cutting precision thereof increase. The coated micro route has longer life and the process time is short. Conventional PVD and CVD can not coat films with good adhesion to the substrate of the micro route. This invention solves the problems that can not be solved by conventional PVD and CVD.